In 1994, scientists found the 125-piece skeleton of the oldest-known hominid skeleton in the world that gives us clues to how humans may have evolved. It has taken all these years for scientists of the world to get the hominid out of the volcanic rock it was in and analyze the skeleton. It was a 4ft tall female who lived about 4 million years ago, weighed about 110 pounds, had very long arms and fingers, had a brain about the size of a chimpanzee, all-purpose teeth (like our teeth) and stood up straight. The hominid called Ardipithecus ramidus- and nicknamed "Ardi" - supports the idea that humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor instead of humans evolving from chimps. Ardi is older than Lucy, who lived about 3.2 million years ago. Ardi lets us know that humans have been evolving for over 6 million years.
This article was very interesting because, until I read it, I didn't know that a skeleton that was older than Lucy had been found. I also thought that humans had evolved from chimpanzees (since much of what I've learned about the evolution of humans has been based around how we've evolved from chimps) although I wasn't that surprised that we had evolved from the same ancestor. I'm also surprised by how long it took to analyze Ardi - it has taken about 15 years.
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